From friendly locals to Harry Potter’s house: a brief guide to Lavenham

The Suffolk town’s beauty apparently saved Andrew Lloyd Webber from thoughts of suicide. What makes it so special?

‘Thank God for Lavenham,” writes Andrew Lloyd Webber in his new memoir. The composer says that, as a depressed 15-year-old, he bought painkillers and a one-way ticket to the end of the London underground, then a bus to the former wool town. It was the beauty of Lavenham’s buildings and its Grade I-listed church that saved him from thoughts of suicide.

Fans of musicals have got this beautiful village in the heart of Suffolk to thank for Aspects of Love and Cats. But what makes it so good?